Knootewoot wrote: »

There is always a cry for nerf. Now it's NB, but

A templar with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking and running away he will heal himself and reset the fight.

A sorc with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking and running away he will streak away and return to the fight when healed using Vigor.

A DK with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking he flaps his wings and lava whips ur behind

A Warden with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking he just does amazing burst so he doesn't need to run away.

This is the 2-handed/bow build every (stamina) class seems to run. All the same skills except a few.

BohnT wrote: »

When going into Cyrodiil stamina nightblades make about 25-35% of the whole playerbase in cyro while there are 10 specs.
When counting magicka nightblades aswell you'll see that 30-40% of Cyrodiils population is nightblades.

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

Knootewoot wrote: »

There is always a cry for nerf. Now it's NB, but

A templar with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking and running away he will heal himself and reset the fight.

A sorc with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking and running away he will streak away and return to the fight when healed using Vigor.

A DK with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking he flaps his wings and lava whips ur behind

A Warden with the same stamina build as the NB can all do the same, except cloak. But instead of cloaking he just does amazing burst so he doesn't need to run away.

This is the 2-handed/bow build every (stamina) class seems to run. All the same skills except a few.

It is very obvious that you never touched a stamDk in your ESO playtime.

A stamDK with the same build will have severely less sustain due to battle roar not scaling with your offensive stats.
That means he won't be dodge rolling around infinite times. a stamDK will also have no access to the crazy passives a nightblade has, no access to minor berserk which means he has to wear slimecraw. no access to major defile unless wearing SnB. No access to crazy %20 damage amp buff that incap gives. No fast spammable that also gives you fracture, instead he has to dizzy swing.

Comparing wings to cloak? Seriously? Since when wings help me heal up or escape chasers or give me free crits?

And lava whip on stamDk? Okay, I've seen enough. I'm done here.

oXI_Viper_IXo wrote: »

Tan9oSuccka wrote: »

What’s the deal with the recent spike in NB hate/salt?

I have a feeling it has a bit to do with Miat's no longer working like it used to.

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

BohnT wrote: »

Right now Nightblades are more popular than ever, they have always been very popular as most people seem to be drawn to the rouge or assassin's playstyle.
But with past balance changes nightblades performance jumped from being a good to overperfoming.
When going into Cyrodiil stamina nightblades make about 25-35% of the whole playerbase in cyro while there are 10 specs.
When counting magicka nightblades aswell you'll see that 30-40% of Cyrodiils population is nightblades.

When looking at the other parts of the game, stamnbs and magnbs pull the highest ST meele and ranged damage thus are prefered for Trial groups. They also grant their group decent damage buffs with a high uptime on major slayer by utilising warmachine or master architect.

So why did they became so popular especially in pvp?
First nightblades have the easiest time to get kills even at low skill levels.
Your burst is front loaded so you don't need to survive to get the most out of your burst.
The burst is very high even when running a sustain build you pull equally high numbers as the other classes even when they are using offensive focused builds.
Also NB feature the cheapest single target nuke ability with 3 powerful effects, cc, major defile and a unique 20% damage boost for 6 seconds, aswell as an non ultimate nuke that has a higher tooltip than incap which got changed twice to become useable even for the worst players and a high damage spammable that also applies major fracture.
These 3 things are enough to kill 80% of all players in cyro even if you have no idea about the game.

The fun doesn't stop here however, nightblades also have great defence and the best mobility skill in the game, shadow image. There is no skill in the whole game that can compete with the kiting opportunities this skill has to offer. And what you shouldn't forget nightblades also have access to cloak, when used right cloak prevents you from taking any kinds of damage, gives you unlimited crit heals which equals to having major mending and vitality all the time and makes you invisible for your enemy so he has no idea where you are going or that you are even there.
This strength comes at a price tho. Cloak only saves you as long as it doesn't get countered here is what distinguishes good nightblades from bad nightblades. A good Nightblade won't let you counter cloak with things like AoEs or mage light. The only way to catch them is by using mark aka being a nightblade yourself or using detection pots which come at a very high opportunity cost while having a long cooldown on top.

To round up the package nightblades have access to some of the greatest passives in the game along with other strong utility skills and due to their defence being able to completely negate any incoming damage they are able to run high damage builds with bad in-fight survivability because they don't have to be in a fight they don't want to be in.

This results in a class that can kill most players in few seconds, while being able to escape reliably when they fail to be successful. Mixed with the low cost of incap and the overall effectiveness of the nightblades toolkit they can continue to engage and disengage at will until they are successful or mess up. With increasing skill level the numbers of times you die because you messed up goes to zero.

So we have nightblades, a class that can hunt everyone but doesn't have to fear the other classes. The only natural predator a nightblade has today is ,outside of its own lack of skill, other nightblades.

All this will result in changes to the nightblade class or to say the bad words: Nightblades will be nerfed!

Due to their popularity in game the nightblade lobby here on the forums is really loud and big but consists of many people who can't fully utilise the class to its full strength and thus saying that they are weak.
But every good Nightblade agrees that they are currently too strong.

So we are heading towards nerfs, they will come and when the community doesn't provide good proposals nightblades will end where stamdk is in pvp or magwarden is in pve right now, completely outclassed by everything else.

There are a few things which are hot candidates for getting nerfed:
Incap: even magnbs are running this over the magicka version as it gives you so much burst with the high damage and cc tied to it. and the skill is overloaded to begin with. This would be the attempt to make the killing power of nightblades a bit less threatening. The easiest way is to remove the CC. This forces the nb to use one additional GCD for a CC to land its burst. In pvp this is a lot.
Short Example: With CC on Incap:
(1.GCD) Heavy attack+ incap from stealth ~9k damage 10k when using Bash aswell
(2.GCD) Light attack+will ~ 12k damage/ 10k when light attack+ Suprise attack
Most players cannot react fast enough to break the CC and avoid the will because the incap cc is as buggy as it is but also due to lag.
Most players in cyro have 23-26k health. So in just 1 second of fight they are at 1-5k health with major defile on them + 20% more damage taken. To survive in this situation you have to dodge, heal to atleast 12k health before the dodge roll ends and pray that the lag doesn't make the next Suprise attack hit you through dodge or that you didn't lost any health to begin with or had a dot on you. If one of these things fails you are dead.

Now the same fight without a CC on Incap:
(1. GCD) Heavy attack + fear to CC your target ~ 3-4k damage
(2.GCD) Light attack + incap ~ 7-8k damage
(3. GCD) now you want to use your will or suprise attack to secure the kill but your enemy isn't CC'ed anymore and will likely dodge so you have to wait and be more strategic when to use your abilities. The damage output against NPCs and bad players stays the same but it's harder to kill good players as easy as it is now.
Cloak: @Ragnaroek93 made a great post how to balance cloak so i hope he can share his ideas in this post. (I'm not a fan of nerfing cloak as it's the iconic nightblade skill and it gives NBs a different approach of surviving but you have to be open for everything when talking about balance)

And here is my rant for everyone who plays a nightblade himself and doesn't want the class to be nerfed. It will happen so please let the good nightblade players lead the discussions about changes to nightblades they have no intrest to kill the class by any means but make it balanced and fun to play. If you have never played alone as a stamblade, fail to reach 40k single target self buffed or haven't completed atleast 4 hm trials, have more than 10 deaths during a 4 hour pvp session or lose many 1v1 fights you should rethink if you have the needed insight for balance discussions about nightblades.
This is not elitism this is to prevent overnerfs for one class


Edit: never write BB code and mix up \ with /

Well I would give Cloak and simple stacking cost. It wouldn't be too dramatic because Nb did still OK when Cloak was buggy. The main problem with stam Nb is that it has so much burst out of Cloak.

The best thing would probably to give stamnb more healing and a class based dot while nerfing Cloak and Incap. This way the class won't be so overpowered against unexperienced players anymore while still being competitive against good opponents.

DDuke wrote: »

Minalan wrote: »

Tan9oSuccka wrote: »

What’s the deal with the recent spike in NB hate/salt?

In this last patch, basically nightblades became immune to two class specific and one general counter.

* Warden cliff racers are dodgeable. These used to be a nightblade’s bane, now they won’t ever hit you if you’re any good. Never. Hit.

* DK powerlash got a cooldown, and is now dodgeable. A nightblade will almost never get hit by this, the single most damaging regular skill proc that a magDK has, thats also tied to their burst heal. And they absolutely suck against good stamblades with it being dodgeable. Can’t hit you. Can’t heal. **** you ZOS.

* Soul Assault took a huge nerf to the snare, which used to be the whole point in using it. Its easy to escape now without dying.

So now TWO classes are now free AP Piñatas for nightblades that weren’t before. You are GOING to get a lot of these threads, you won’t like it, but neither do they.

Yes, and all of those were good changes because they really were countering medium armor builds too hard. I still see mDKs & Wardens doing well in Cyrodiil, BGs & Duels.

Also, you still get the heal from Power Lash even if it misses btw.


That said, I do agree that dodge roll spam needs to be toned down.

I like how it actually accomplishes something in this patch, but I dislike that people can spam it nonstop without running out of stamina.

So maybe ZOS should increase the stacking cost modifier for dodge roll (or increase the duration for the debuff so that people can't use one cloak to just reset the counter & carry on spamming dodge roll until the next Incap).

Also, builds that struggle vs dodge roll tactics should get some undodgeable abilities (on par with Steel Tornado/Brawler which were recently changed to be undodgeable). For instance, bow builds should be able to bypass dodge roll with Acid Spray/Bombard.

Rickter wrote: »

nb are pretty broke.

1. fear is a hard cc and a snare
   
2. incap is a high burst dmg, hard cc, major defile, and grants an uncategorized 20% dmg buff
   
3. cloak has no checks and balances, with some able to build to spam it giving the class an unprecedented ability to reset fights whenever they see fit - additionally, any attack out of cloak is guaranteed critical
   
4. assassin's will proc does MORE dmg than incap ultimate typically
   
5. mirage gives Major Evasion, Minor Resolve and Minor Ward, coupled with heavy armor and its clearly not very fair give nthe recent armor ability changes
   
6. Surprise attack (a spammable) gives Major Fracture
   
7. and we havent even covered the great sustain passives and ultimate reduction nbs have
   

seems legit.